This week, I left the Adobe San Jose office to spend a few days in Monterey (just about an hour’s drive south of us, right along the coast) to immerse myself in the creative world of sculptors, painters, magicians, actors, poets, musicians, digital artists and…a cluster balloonist (yes, he was there! ) at the 5th annual e.g. conference. The e.g. conference is an intimate gathering where innovators and leaders come to be inspired – breaking free of society’s molds, fully embracing what they’re most passionate about and encouraging each other to re-think what’s possible.

It was fitting that I found myself in this melting pot of creativity, as Adobe steps outside of its traditional workflows and completely re-thinks how people interact with mobile and tablet devices. As evidenced at the conference this week, creativity and inspiration can happen just about anywhere and we want to ensure you’ve got what you need to also realize that spontaneous thought, idea or vision wherever you are. A few weeks ago, we shared a bit about what we’re doing behind the scenes to explore the possibilities with Photoshop and tablet devices.

Today, we’re officially announcing our first steps toward uniting the fun of touch with the precision and power of Photoshop on the desktop. With a free Adobe Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK), we’re essentially opening the doors to two way communication between mobile and tablet devices and Photoshop CS5, which allows developers to now offer a wide range of interactive apps. What does this two way communication mean for you?

As you’ve seen in the video, we have developed three initial Photoshop Touch apps, as examples of what can be done with the Adobe Photoshop Touch SDK from a creative standpoint: Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav.

Adobe Color Lava, allows you to mix colors on the iPad, creating custom color swatches and themes to transfer back into Photoshop.

Adobe Eazel lets digital artists create rich realistic paintings with their fingertips. These paintings can then be sent directly to Photoshop CS5 for compositing or for taking the artwork further.

Adobe Nav allows you to select and control Photoshop tools using the iPad as the input surface, customize the toolbar, browse and zoom in on up to 200 open Photoshop files or easily create new files.

Adobe Nav is a good demonstration of the potential for communicating with or “driving Photoshop.” If any device with a wifi connection – iOS, Android or Blackberry PlayBook – could interact with Photoshop, this could mean richer interaction in an instructional setting, like a classroom. Design students could all use their tablet devices to drive tools in Photoshop that would appear on the main projection screen for everyone to see. This type of interaction is not just limited to class lectures. It can also extend to “how-to” books where instead of flipping back and forth from reading text and performing the steps on the desktop, touching a button within your e-book would perform those actions for you directly in Photoshop. Everyone snaps spontaneous images with their camera phones and then the images remain trapped on the device. What if you could send those images direct to Photoshop for further refinement, printing or compositing? Hardware devices like printers or even cameras could also take advantage of communication with Photoshop and provide you with more options for sharing data between devices and Photoshop. There are so many possibilities…

In the coming weeks, we’ll share some more videos to give you a peek of what those apps look like, as they will be available in the iTunes store in early May. However, we’re more excited about what this means for the development community. We’ve already heard from a number of industry partners, authors, publishers and digital artists who see so much potential in this new interaction between mobile devices and Photoshop CS5. Now’s the fun part…as we sit back and watch what they dream up, create and realize with this new connection.

Maria Yap

Maria Yap leads product management and customer engagement for some of Adobe's flagship professional creative products. Maria has driven the strategy and development of Acrobat, InDesign, Creative Suites, Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Touch and Adobe Revel. Before becoming a product manager, Maria founded her own company of designers and production experts. She continues her passion for creativity by working on the yearbook for her children's school and taking lots of family pictures.

Join the discussion

By sara - 9:52 PM on April 10, 2011

That’s really awesome
Thanks a lot

By Reese - 10:02 PM on April 10, 2011

That is kind of cool, and I do give credit for showing a Zoom before an Ipad.

But…wouldn’t using a wacom penabled Tablet PC…that can run full Photoshop be much more practical and useful. The Asus Ep121 with its Wacom digitizer runs Photoshop CS5 beautifully. Even the HP Slate 500…which has netbook guts and a N-trig pen can run photoshop CS3 pretty well, pen issues aside.

By sweet - 10:27 PM on April 10, 2011

i dont get the funds..if ipad dosent hav a cursor..how canone work on details in photoshop..does stylus work on ipad?

By Christian - 11:28 PM on April 10, 2011

They acknowledge the fact that there will be limits to what you can do. I get the impression that they are allowing a robust platform for doing advanced sketches when you’re out and about before the inspiration leaves you..that you will then transfer to your computer for further refinement if you so choose.

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i just want whatever is free for storing my pictures on my computer & occasionally sending them via email. don’t need anything fancy & since i lost my job, need something free. i filled out some forms on this & have no ideal what i filled out, i just don’t want to be charged with anything. thanks.